Russia’s military diplomacy in Africa

Many African countries this year participated in the International Military-Technical forum dubbed «ARMY-2018» organised by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in Kubinka, located approximately 280 km from Moscow.

The «ARMY-2018» received about 120 official delegations from foreign countries and featured nearly 150 events as part of its scientific business programme. The annual games allow the different world forces to improve their efficiency, knowledge and friendship. The army extravaganza, billed the Olympics of the Military World, now in its fourth year.

There were more than 26,000 exhibits on display especially the latest weapons aimed at attracting more foreign customers. The show featured Russia’s latest fighter jet, the Su-57, the Kinzhal hypersonic weapon and the Armata battle tank among other new weapons. It also had robotic systems and flyovers by the air force’s aerobatic squadrons.

President Vladimir Putin said in an address to the «ARMY-2018» that it reflected the huge potential of Russian military industries and would serve as a platform for military cooperation with interested foreign countries.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu emphasised that most new weapons at the show have proven their worth during the Syrian campaign. “They demonstrate the latest achievements of our industries and science,” he asserted.

During the event, General Director of ROE, Alexander Mikheev noted: “By tradition, it gives the RosOboronExport maximum monetisation of all exhibition events in the world. It gathers the largest number of foreign delegations in Moscow.”

He noted the increasing special demand from African countries. “We will see a real African breakthrough. In addition to our traditional partners from North Africa, we are waiting for representatives from 16 countries of the sub-Saharan continent at our booth and meeting rooms,” Mikheev said.

For example, as gathered at the forum, it became clear that Niger was interested in buying Russian helicopters and small arms, including grenade launchers. Several agreements reviewed and signed with a number of participating African countries including Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Central African Republic.

“Today (at the Army-2018 forum), we signed an intergovernmental agreement on military cooperation, the implementation of which will contribute to strengthening ties in the defense sector in a number of African countries,” Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said during talks with the Minister of National Defense of Central African Republic, Marie Noel Coyara.

The Ministry reported on its website that “Deputy Defense Minister Col. Gen. Alexander Fomin met with Ivory Coast Defense Minister, Hamed Bakayoko on the sidelines of the forum. During the meeting, the sides discussed military and military-technical cooperation projects and exchanged opinions on key regional security issues facing the African continent.”

The parties reaffirmed their commitment to strengthening friendly relations between the armed forces of the two countries further, it said. According to Fomin, there were many interested foreign customers including Asian and African countries, which works well for the Kremlin.

“The Soviet Union poured resources into the African continent for ideological reasons. Putin will not do such thing. We know that the African continent has a great potential and it can be market-oriented and based on mutual interest,” he finally stressed.

Still, the Kremlin’s larger aims are political and geostrategic. Putin’s overall military moves in the Middle East but also North Africa limit the West’s ability to maneuver.

North African countries on the Mediterranean’s southern coast can potentially gain Russia, a traditional land power, access to additional warm water ports – something Russian leaders coveted since Peter the Great. Such access would allow Russia to project military power into Europe, Middle East and North Africa.

On top priority are Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and Angola. East and Southern African countries are also Russia’s market focus while recently concluded agreements with Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Rwanda, Burundi and Chad.

Algeria has long been in Moscow’s camp and remained a top buyer of Russian arms throughout the 2000s. But in 2014, the two countries signed a $1 billion arms deal which a Russian military expert in business-oriented Vedomosti financial newspaper described as “possibly the largest export contract for main battle tanks in the world.”

“Several financial arrangements were also made to ensure financing of developments and production of modern military equipment samples. Firm orders from countries in Asia and Africa, and the CIS became part of Rostec’s portfolio of orders,” according to the document released August 26.

Over recent years, Russia has considerably expanded its arms sales, both in terms of the number of African countries involved in the deals and the types of weapons and military equipment being sold, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

By estimation, Russia shipped US$357.1 billion worth of goods around the globe in 2017. This included African countries. Africa accounted for 13% of Russian arms sales over the last five years.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union provided huge quantities of arms to a number of African governments such as Angola, Ethiopia and Mozambique. But, now ideology is not a significant factor, according to analysis by both foreign and local policy experts.

As Anna Borshchevskaya, an Ira Weiner fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, explicitly observes that military has been part of the foreign policy of the Russian Federation, and Russian authorities have been strengthening military-technical cooperation with a number of African countries.

“A major driver for Moscow’s push into Africa is military cooperation more broadly. These often include officer training and the sale of military equipment, though the details are rarely publicly available,” she also acknowledges in her discussion for this news report.

Dmitri Bondarenko, Deputy Director of the African Studies Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told me: “With African countries, the primary aim now for Russian business is to regain a competitive edge in the global arms trade, and what’s interesting is that the approach is not ideological but very pragmatic – you pay, we ship. It’s simply business and nothing more.”

Ruslan Pukhov, Director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST), founded in 1997 as a leading Russian defense industry and arms trade think tank, explained to me that Russia has revived contacts with African comrades that used to be traditional buyers of Soviet weaponry.

He pointed out that although much has changed in the sense, “Russia is using military diplomacy in order to gain stature and influence in Africa.”

Nikolai Shcherbakov, an Analyst at the Center for African Studies of the Institute of General History, indicated that Moscow is steadily seeking to strengthen its position as a major arms supplier to the African continent, and further explained that “Russia’s military technology was top-notch while the weapons were priced very good to be competitive on the market.”

In his assessment, Dr Richard Connolly, Associate Fellow at Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House, noted that Russia is the world’s second-largest arms exporter after the US, and is seeking to strengthen its position in new markets.

“Asia is the most important foreign market for Russian arms producers, accounting for 70 per cent of their exports since 2000. The Middle East and North Africa is the second-most important market, but competition from other suppliers is much more intense there. Latin America and Africa are of relatively modest importance,” he concluded.

Kester Kenn Klomegah is an independent researcher and writer on African affairs in the EurAsian region and former Soviet republics. He wrote previously for African Press Agency, African Executive and Inter Press Service. Earlier, he had worked for The Moscow Times, a reputable English newspaper. Klomegah taught part-time at the Moscow Institute of Modern Journalism. He studied international journalism and mass communication, and later spent a year at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He co-authored a book “AIDS/HIV and Men: Taking Risk or Taking Responsibility” published by the London-based Panos Institute. In 2004 and again in 2009, he won the Golden Word Prize for a series of analytical articles on Russia's economic cooperation with African countries.

No one will deter Russia in the Baltic region

Recently researchers and analysts of the RAND Corporation issued the report “Exploring Requirements for Effective Deterrence of Interstate Aggression.”

The stated aim of this report is “to provide a fresh look at the subject in this context, with two primary purposes: to review established concepts about deterrence, and to provide a framework for evaluating the strength of deterrent relationships.” Chapter Four of the report is called “Deterring Russia in the Baltic Region” and presents analysis of security challenges in the Baltic States.

This particular report is interesting by the fact that it acknowledges the minimal likelihood of Russia’s military aggression in the Baltics. It is more than strange when take into account the previous report that insisted on high level probability of Russian aggression. This time experts consider the situation to be less dangerous for the Baltic Region.

According to the RAND Corporation analysts, Russia does not consider the Baltic States to be a strategically important region for itself.

Therefore, despite the Kremlin’s desire to change the balance of forces in Europe in its favor, Russia does not consider “aggressive actions in the Baltic States as a tool of achieving these goals.”

The US specialists have not found evidence of preparing the invasion of Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania, and Russia’s buildup of military power on their borders.

They have made a conclusion that a more aggressive behavior of Russia towards the Baltic countries can occur in case of the anti-missile defense systems deployment on their territory.

Instead, experts recommend that the US authorities treat Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with understanding and condescension and even take into account that their eternal anti-Russian fears are associated with difficult common historical past. In other words, they advise to rather provide moral support.

The report of the RAND Corporation cannot be treated only as a private opinion of a non-governmental organization. The findings of this center of expertise usually anticipate and justify strategic decisions made by the United States.

Thus, two years ago RAND Corporation held a war game, which revealed that the Russian armed forces need only about 60 hours to occupy the Baltic States, and NATO allies would not physically have time to help Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The analysis of the results of the war game was one of the rationales for deploying four multinational battalion-size battle groups on their territory.

Today, the RAND Corporation concludes that Russia does not threaten the Baltic States, and military tensions over this region can arise only if the missile defense systems are deployed. It follows logically that the further militarization of the Baltic States is explosive and undesirable.

So, the US elites as well as NATO do not want to deal with the Baltic States. They do not want to be distracted by countries that are of no importance for Russia, their main antagonist.

The first recommendation made by the analysts of the RAND Corporation in the report is “to assess the motives of potential aggressors and ease security concerns. In Europe, this could include avoiding deployment of the most provocative U.S. systems in or near Eastern Europe, thinning Russian and Baltic forces, and working on a successor to the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty.”

In the case of military provocation in the Baltic Sea, similar to the one that occurred in the Kerch Strait, NATO, the US or the EU will not even provide the Baltic States with active diplomatic assistance, not to mention immediate military support. The RAND Corporation made this more than clear for the Baltic States.

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Russian Aluminium, Health Ministry Announce Ebola Vaccine

Russian Aluminium (RUSAL), one of the world’s largest aluminium producers, together with the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, announced the completion of the vaccination against the Ebola virus in the Republic of Guinea. Two thousand people have received the GamEvac-Combi vaccines during the testing programme conducted at the Scientific Diagnostic Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology (SDCEM) in Guinea.

The centre was an initiative of Russian business tycoon, Oleg Deripaska, and was built by RUSAL during the height of the Ebola epidemic in 2015. GamEvac-Combi vaccine was created in the Gamalei Federal Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation. The vaccine is currently in the final round of testing.

“As part of the testing programme, the health of the vaccinated participants and the development of the immunity are monitored for one year. At the end of this period of monitoring, the vaccine will receive international certification making it available for use by the World Health Organisation and other organizations for the purpose of preventing the spread of the disease,” according to media release.

Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, instructed the development of the vaccine following a request from the President of the Republic of Guinea Alpha Condé at the end of 2014.

In 2016, the vaccine was revealed during the World Health Assembly where the former WHO Director-General, Margaret Chen, was in attendance. The vaccine was registered in Russia at the end of 2015.

Along with developing the vaccine, RUSAL, as part of the public-private partnership supported by Oleg Deripaska, opened a research centre, an isolation ward and a hospital in Guinea. RUSAL’s commitment to fighting the epidemic was acknowledged by the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, who thanked RUSAL’s shareholder, Oleg Deripaska, for his contribution to the international effort against Ebola.

The strong relationship that RUSAL has established with the Republic of Guinea is something that Oleg Deripaska often speaks about. He recently highlighted RUSAL’s commitment to helping the population of the country hit by the virus; “When the outbreak of the fever came, we made every effort to help”, said Oleg Deripaska.

“Currently the vaccine is administered to the Russian medics and other specialists going to the regions where there is a high risk of Ebola contagion”, said Veronika Skvortsova, the Minister of Health of the Russian Federation. “During the Ebola outbreak, the centre has shown the best results in terms of the number of Guinean persons wholly recovered: 62.5% of the SDCEM patients with a confirmed Ebola fever diagnosis have been successfully treated”.

The advantages of GamEvac-Combi vaccine

The vaccine was developed using a biotechnology method without using the pathogenic Ebola virus. The base of the vaccine is the genetic material of an adenovirus and vesicular canker virus, safe for humans, modified with a gene containing the information about the structure of the GP protein of the Ebola virus.

Pre-clinical and clinical studies have proven the safety of the vaccine and have shown that it stimulates the immune system more efficiently than foreign vaccines. Another important advantage of the vaccine is its more favourable transportation and storage conditions: GamEvac-Combi can be transported and stored at the temperature above -16◦C – and similar foreign vaccines require the temperature of less than – 60 ◦C for storage, which is difficult to implement in the hot African climate.

The SDCEM centre, that will continue to do medical examinations for the Guinean population, is the most advanced and biologically safe facility in the Western Africa. The centre was created in line with all international humanitarian organizations’ recommendations and is equipped with modern medical and laboratory equipment. RUSAL invested more than US$10 million in the construction of the SDCEM.

Currently, SDCEM is the leading centre in the field of investigating and preventing infectious diseases in Guinea. It also serves as the training facility for the national epidemiologists.

RUSAL has been active in Guinea since 2001 being one of the largest foreign investors in the country. In Guinea, RUSAL owns Kindia Bauxite Company (KBC) as well as the bauxite-alumina facility Friguia. RUSAL continues implementing projects to launch the world’s largest bauxite mines Dian-Dian in Boké region.

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Putin, United Russia and the Message

On Dec. 8, Russian President Vladimir Putin took part in the plenary meeting of the 18th United Russia party congress, reiterated the key challenges, problems and accomplishments for the nation. The congress delegates identified the challenges and priorities in the party’s work for the coming year.

Putin acknowledged the party’s support during his presidential election campaign, saying it was “a momentous thing shaping the top institution of power” in Russia. This concerns the president, the government, the region – any level, down to the local or municipal one.

Putin further referred to an action plan that was presented in a condensed form in the Executive Order in May 2018 and that set out in national projects drafted by the Government (the majority in the Government are United Russia members) and was supported by legislators (United Russia holds the majority in the State Duma). He pointed to the fact that there would not be any success without United Russia’s backing at the regional and municipal level.

“The United Russia party plays a special role. For a number of years the party has been showing its competence, its ability to make responsible decisions, explain these decisions to the people,” Putin told the party delegates during his address, while acknowledging frankly that there have been pitfalls and problems in the political leadership.

Leadership means making responsible decisions the country needs. This leadership is an enormous resource to achieve dynamic and substantive change that can ensure a radical improvement in the quality of life and greater well-being of the population.

Putin reminded the party meeting that the entire world going through a dramatic situation. In his words: “the world is undergoing a transformation, a very powerful and dynamically evolving transformation, and if we do not get our bearings, if we do not understand what we need to do and how, we may fall behind for good.”

He suggested that United Russia with its tremendous legislative, organisational and human resource potential must fully utilise it and consolidate all of society, in solving development issues, in implementing the nationwide agenda.

Putin told the party delegates never allow any sort of rudeness, arrogance, insolence towards people at any level – at the top level and the lowest, municipal level. This is important because it does the country a disservice, it is unfair to the people and it denigrates the party to the lowest of the low. The public demands fairness, honesty and openness.

What is “society” after all? It is the people. Thus, one key factor here is that people’s opinions and attitudes must necessarily be taken into account. There must be commitment to implementing people’s initiatives, and their initiatives must be used in attaining common goals, especially at the municipal level, according to the Russian leader.

The most crucial thing for a political party is a steady standing of its representatives and that United Russia does not have to fear change but rather work strategically towards making a change for the better.

Putin further asked the delegates to work relentlessly for a free democratic country, development of nationwide tasks, realisation of new ideas and approaches. Discussions and competition, including within the party itself are very efficient tools for solving problems in the interests of the nation. United Russia has to do everything needed to instil both inside the party in particular and in society in general this political culture, an atmosphere of dialogue, trust and cooperation with all political forces of Russia.